Thank god European societies are changing today. Migrant people who took a effort in learning the native European language of the country they reside in, who learned something about the history, traditions, customs, social structures, the legal system, the social codes, the native European majority around them, the political system (democracy), the financial-economical system, social security, health care and education system and the culture and art of the country they live in are respected. They even are respected with their ethnicity, religion and their own religious festivities, fasts and holidays.
Who are not respected, not welcomed and and unliked are the ones who came and stayed in their own linguistic, ethnic and national religious communities and failed to connect with not only the Dutch but also with other migrant communities. The gap between Turkish Dutch people and Moroccan Dutch people is even greater than the gap between Turkish Dutch people on one side and native Dutch people on the other side, because a Turkish Dutch person speaks Dutch with a Turkish vocabulary in the back of his mind and the Moroccan Dutch person speaks Dutch with a Moroccan Berber or Moroccan Arabic vocabulary in the back of his mind. A Turkish friend of mine told me this.
Marriages between Turks and foreigners on the rise, bring problems for both Turkish women in Turkey and in the Netherlands. Turkish men also marry Bosnian muslim women and sometimes Moroccan or Dutch converted women. And secular (atheist) Turkish or Turkish Kurd men also date Dutch women and girls and girls and women of other nationalities. In the same time some Dutch men have Turkish or Turkish Kurd wives or girlfriends.Some of the newest Dutch speaking and Dutch feeling third or forth generation Dutch Moroccans and Dutch Turks don't have that problem because they have Duch speaking parents at home and Turkish and Moroccan speaking grandparents in Turkey and Morocco or in the Netherlands. The migrants who live in majority migrant neighbourhoods, whom kids go to black schools, and live only in their own ethnic and linguistic Dutch Turkish or Moroccan Dutch communities, mosque community, and a world of migrant shops, migrant supermarkets, migrant cultural foundations, migrant coffeehouses (only for men), migrant soccer clubs, migrant driving instructors and wash stations. Some Fundamentalist Islamist Sunni Muslims leave the ethnic Turkish and Moroccan mosques, and say that their islamic identity is more important than the National identity of the mosques of their ancestors, their grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents and their respective Turkish and Moroccan communities. They leave their communities often after disputes in mosques and start following Salafist preachers in Salafist or Wahabi (Saoudi Arabian funded) mosques, which follow a very strict, fundamentalist, puritanical, Ultra-Orthodox, radical form of Islam.
The new mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema has a stronger stance on Salafism than her predecessors Jozias van Aartsen and Eberhard van der LaanIn that way you see divisions in the Moroccan community between older and newer generations, between those who follow the rather moderate conservative
Sunni Islam belonging to
the Maliki school of jurisprudence. You also see divisions in the Moroccan community between those who became Europeanised due to westernisation via their integration process and in some cases assimilation process. These Moroccans have become secular leftwingers, SP (Socialist Party),
GroenLinks (
GreenLeft), the
Labour party (
PvdA),
D66 (pragmatic social liberal centrists), conservative liberal (
VVD) and in some cases even Christian-Democratic (
CDA) voters. They are part of the Dutch society, culture, economy and political system. And they face pressure and rejection from 2 sides. First from their own Moroccan communities and sometimes families, who have a North-African family clan and sometimes tribal based culture, in which ethnic loyalty to your
Berber family clan,
tribe,
the Moroccan nation and your
Maliki school Sunni Muslim faith is important. These '
desenters' are labeled as
Bounties, white native European West-Germanic Dutch (integrated/assimilated) from the outside and Moroccan Berber from the inside.
Moroccan King Mohammed VI was welcomed enthousiastically by Moroccan Dutch people in 2016 during his visit to the Netherlands. Photo: Robin UtrechtFrom the other side these assimilated and integrated '
Dutch feeling' Moroccans and other people with a Muslim migrant background who merged their ethnic background with that of a native Dutch (West-Germanic) linguistic, social-cultural and political identity also face rejection from
the rightwing National Populists of
Geert Wilders PVV (
Freedom party) and
Thierry Baudets Forum for Democracy who think ethnic in terms of
native European identity (
Identitarianism),
Judeo-christian and
humanist European heritage and
European nations of the European peoples.
The Turks are stronger organised as an ethnic group in the financial, economical, social-cultural, ethnic, religious, political, and self support sense.
Dutch Turks built political skills in political parties like the
Labour party (
PvdA), and with their own
Turkish Dutch Workers Association (
HTIB),
Democratic Association of workers from Turkey in the Netherlands (
DIDF), their mosque organisations
Diyanet,
Millî Görüş,
SCIN; Foundation Islamic Center in the Netherlands (
Stichting Islamitische Centrum Nederland),
the Gülen movement (Gülen-beweging) in the Netherlands (
Hizmet), Turkish Alevites in the Netherlands, Nurcu's in the Netherlands (founded by the Turkish-Kurd muslim scholar Said Nursi), and
the Armenians (
Federation Armenian Organisation Netherlands [
FAON]) and the
Suryoye. The
Suryoye are a ethno-religious community, coming from present day Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey and connected to the Eastern-Christian churches in the Arab world of the Middle-East.
Suryoye community Glane The Netherlands.Another Turkish organisation in the Netherlands is the
TFN the Turkish Federation Netherlands , a nationalist organisation which is linked to the Turkish political party MHP (Nationalist Action Party). The
TFN and the ‘Grey Wolves’ organisation which is linked to the
TFN were connected to far right violence in Turkey and in Turkish Diaspora communities in Europe where tensions exist between nationalistic rightwing and islamist ethnic Turks on one side and far left ethnic Turks and Kurds on the other side.
The logo of the the Turkish Federation NetherlandsThe
HTKB is an association of Turkish-Dutch women whose aim it is to promote the development of Turkish-Dutch women and to represent the interests of these women.
A logo of the Democratic Association of workers from Turkey in the Netherlands (Democratische Verenigingen van Arbeiders uit Turkije in Nederland)Turks generally support parties on the left (PvdA, D66, GroenLinks, and SP) over parties on the right (CDA, VVD and SGP). In the past, migrants were not as eager to vote. However, they are now aware that they can become a decisive factor in the Dutch political system. There has been some criticisms that certain parties (such as the Social Democrats) are becoming the parties of migrants because of the votes they receive from migrants and the increase in the number of elected ethnic Turkish candidates. During the Dutch general election (2002), there were fourteen candidates of Turkish origin spread out over six party lists which encouraged fifty-five percent of Turks to vote, which was a much higher turnout than any other ethnic minorities.
The Turkish (state) Directorate of Religious Affairs Diyanet has facilitated a fusion of religion and politics (Islamism) in the Netherlands and allowed the AKP-associated party DENK to spread propaganda in mosques under its control located in the Netherlands. When Turkish migrant organizations were requested to join a statement against domestic violence, the religious attaché of the Turkish Embassy declraed that domestic violence does not exist in Turkish society and all Turkish Islamic organizations withdrew their support from the statement.
Anti-TurkismTurks are the second-largest ethnic minority group in the Netherlands. Even though progressive policies are installed, "especially compared with those in some other European countries such as Germany" Human Rights Watch criticized the Netherlands for new legislations violating the human rights of Turkish ethnic minority group. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance published its third report on Netherlands in 2008. In this report Turkish minority group is described as a notable community which have been particularly affected by "stigmatisation of and discrimination against members of minority groups" as a result of controversial policies of the governments of Netherlands. The same report also noted that "the tone of Dutch political and public debate around integration and other issues relevant to ethnic minorities has experienced a dramatic deterioration".
Anti-Turkism, also known as Turkophobia or anti-Turkish sentiment, is hostility, intolerance, or racism against Turkish or Turkic people, Turkish culture, Turkic countries, or Turkey itself.
According to the European Network Against Racism, an international organisation supported by the European Commission, half of all Turks in the Netherlands report having experienced racial discrimination.[90] The network also noted "dramatic growth" of Islamophobia and antisemitism. In 2001, another international organisation, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, highlighted a negative trend in Dutch attitudes towards minorities, compared with average European Union results. That analysis also noted that, compared to other Europeans, the Dutch were "more in favour of cultural assimilation of minorities" rather than "cultural enrichment by minority groups".
Fact is that a lot of the integrated and assimilated Moroccan Dutch and Turkish Dutch people are increasingly living lives like native Dutch adults, adolescents and thus working Young Urban Professionals, workers, civil servants and entrepreneurs. Like Dutch people they buy their furniture in IKEA srtores, go to the Praxis, Maxis (hypermarkt), the Praxis stores of the Dutch Hardware store-chain Praxis Do-It-Yourself Centre B.V., to Albert Hein Supermarket, and drink beer, vodka, whiskey, wine and eat Duch food next to Moroccan Berber and Moroccan Arab food from the Maghreb (North-Africa), like the delicious beef, goat, mutton and lamb, chicken and seafood, lemon pickle, argan oil, cold-pressed, unrefined olive oil and dried fruits dishes. As in Mediterranean cuisine in general, the staple ingredients include wheat, used for bread and couscous, and olive oil; the third Mediterranean staple, the grape, is eaten as a dessert, though a certain amount of wine is made in the country. So the Moroccan Duch and Turkish Dutch have developed their new 50-50 mix culture, but in reality more and more of them have more a 75% Dutch and 25% Moroccan culture. Their partners are raised in the Netherlands, their children speak Dutch, and have non-Moroccan Turkish, Kurd, Native Dutch and other friends. That is the reality of the Netherlands Jaga, Karl, Kaima, John, Jeanne, Eric, Ludwik and other forum members who read this. The Netherlands has become both an intercultural, multi-cultural and mono-cultural society. Why the latter? Whel because many Native Dutch West-European West-Germanic Dutch people (Friesians, Hollanders, Low Saxon Groningers, Drenthe people, Overijssel people, Gelderlanders, and Southern Limburgians, Brabanders and Zealanders have their own local Dutch, regional Dutch and national Dutch identity, cultures and linguistic, dialectical, regional language and national language -general Dutch- identity, and don't feel connected to the Moroccan Dutch, Turkish Dutch, Surinamese people, Dutch Antillian people, Iranians, Syrians, African immigrants, Indonesians, and Polish-, Czech-, Slovak-, Hungarian-, Lithuanian-, Romanian-, Bulgarian other any other immigrants, because they are ethnically, culturally, linguistically different. They have a different accent, and sometimes you can't even understand them. Like I couldn't understand my Eastern Dutch Low Saxon compatriot, because he spoke a very heavy Low Saxon dialect.) live in their monocultural reality, and the Dutch Turks and Dutch Moroccan majorities in their monocultural Dutch Turkish and Dutch Moroccan paralel societies. Maybe you could compare that to China town, Little Italy, Hasidic parts of Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Little Poland in Greenpoint in Brooklyn?
The climate today is that in this North-West-European country which is called the Netherlands which had an image, identity and attitude of tolerance, liberalism, humanism, social democratic tendencies and christian democratic communitarism and corporatism during the 20th century and early 21th century, the climate has changed towards a more British and American conservative attitude, and Central- and Eastern-European like Nationalistic tendencies. Where in the seventies, eighties and nineties socialist New Left, Social Democratic and progressive social liberal ideas, policies, measures and administrations were still dominant, and conservatism, Nationalism (in it's rightwing nationalist and leftwing nationalist forms), Patriotism, xenophobia, discrimination, identitarianism (identity politics), ethnocentric ideologies, rightwing populism and leftwing populism, traditional ideas and national identity were taboo, not thought about or not existing, today ethnocentrism, regionalism, nationalism, rightwing Populist National Populism, Fortuynism (
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Fortuynism ), leftwing populism (present in both the Socialist Party SP and the Social Democratic Labour Party PvdA) are alive and kicking. Leftwing populism exists in the Netherlands next to the rightwing populist National populists Steve Bannon likes so much. It is mainly based in the working class party socialist party which started to act as a socialist working class party for native Dutch workers in the eighties. Leftwing populism and leftwing nationalism has old roots in Europe. Look at the Basque Country (autonomous community) and Catalonia in Spain, the Republican Irish movement in Northern Ireland (Sinn Féin) and Samoobrona Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej (Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland, SRP) in Poland.
The society has shifted from a predominantly progressive center left social liberal, Social Democratic and the progressive leftwing of the Christian Democratic CDA party and the Christian Union CNV and the social liberal leftwing wing of the conservative liberal VVD (which leftwing wing is close to the pragmatic social liberal center left D66 party) in the seventies, with the support or leftwing opposition of the old left or small left PSP (radical left Pacifist Socialist Party), CPN (radical left Communist Party of the Netherlands -Moscow loaylists-), PPR (radical left christian radicals of the Political Party of Radicals) and the leftwing (also radical left Evangelical Peoples Party EVP, which cooperated with the PSP, CPN, PPR and the Social Democratic Labour Party PvdA) towards a more rightwing, conservative liberal, rightwing National Populist, leftwing populist, leftwing Nationalist and in general more conservative direction. In the Netherlands today there is more attention for the Dutch Western European culture which should be the norm. Both left and right find integration and assimilation of newcomers necessery. Where in the past the own culture, language, idenity and uniqueness of newcomers was cherished, today the authorities, political parties and population demand more adaptation of migrants. The lack of integration and assimilation and the segregational and or separatist tendencies of migrant communities cause irritation and frustration of native Dutch people and the same is the case with other European peoples. Native Dutch working class and middle class people in Dutch working class neighbourhoods are irritated when they can't understand Turkish, Moroccan berber/Arabic, Kurd, Iranian, Pakistani, Polish, Romanian or Bulgarian speaking groups of migrants in their environment, especially when their communities become to large and when the migrant population becomes large than the native European population in such neighbourhoods. The Dutch in such cases develop negative, defensive, closed (introvert) attitudes towards these newcomers, because they speak foreign languages in their streets, their squares. These people started to vote en mass for Geert Wilders Freedom party, PVV, because he said he will do something about that. In a different manner Thierry Baudet and his Forum for Democracy party say the same thing as Geert Wilders, but maybe in a more intellectual (rightwing intellectual) manner. Dutch working class people in the large cities and towns abandoned the Labour party (PvdA) and started voting National Populist (PVV). It is a fact that there is an atmosphere of tension in some neighbourhoods, because native Dutch workers don't like migrants and some migrants don't like native Dutch people and only stick to their own. Moroccan Dutch people stay in the Moroccan Dutch communuity, Turks stay in the Moroccan Dutch community, Poles stick with the Poles and the Dutch stick with the Dutch. Ofcourse you also have multi-ethnic groups of mixed people who are friends, work together and go out together. But unfortunately that latter group is the minority. In the majority case we have a refined culture of voluntary segregation and Pillarisation (Dutch: verzuiling). You have the poorer Dutch working class who form a underclass, working class and low working class pillar of low educated native Dutch people who like soccer, cheap entertainment, unhealthy cheap food, beer, cigarettes, Mc Donalds, the Buger King and the rightwing populists of the PVV and the leftwing populists of the Socialist Parties (SP) who have a raw working class base. No nuance but targeting the migrants (foreigners, aliens, people who look different, speak a language Dutch workers and middle class people can't uunderstand). Next to that you have the secular classical liberal upper middle class and high class and Dutch aristocracy pillar or layer. People who have higher incomes, live in predominantly native Dutch rich, luxerious, clean, pleasant neighbourhoods in which academic university level and vocational university (HBO) level people live with scientific, financial-economical (management/CEO/management skills). The Dutch elite of school teachers, middle level and top level civil servants of muncipalities, provinces and the ministeries of the national government, the entrepreneurs, shop and store owners, Horeca people, bankers, doctors, lawjers, judges, attorneys, medics (surgeons), stock brokers and businessbankers, politicians and people who run the universities and research and development centers and who work for the Dutch multi-nationals. Another pillar is the native Dutch christian rural agrarian (Protestant Calvinist and Roman-Catholic) Christian Democratic pillar of farmers, fishermen and christian towns and city people. The latter has become a small pillar because the majroity of the Netherlands isn't confessional christian, but secular, the influence of the 19th and 20th century liberalism and Social-Democracy in the Netherlands. The last and growing pillar is the pillar of the Muslim migrant people in the Netherlands who have their Denk (Thinm) party in the Dutch parliament and their Turkish, Moroccan, Kurd, Bosnian, Iraqi, Syrian, Afghan and Iranian communities in the Netherlands. The people of the former Duch colonies like Indonesia, Suriname and the Dutch Antilles who were already raised and educated in Dutch in colonial times don't feel connected to the Muslim migrant community and therfor connect more to the native Dutch or stick to their own Indonesian, Surinamese and Dutch Antillian communities. In the Hague 30 thousand Polish people live and therefor you have a Polish community in the Hague.
If your read this you see how left and center left the Netherlands were during the seventies, eighties and nineties. That left isn't gone, but has become more pragmatic, more European (Pro-European), more linked the the American Democratic party (to both Hillary Clinton and the Bernie Sanders movements within the Democratic party), and the Green Party of the United States (GPUS) of Jill Stein, Ajamu Baraka, Ralph Nader, Winona LaDuke, David Cobb, Cheri Honkala, Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente. Today the Netherlands is a more rightwing and conservative country than it was during the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties and early this century.
Fortuynism (
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Fortuynism ),
911, the political assassinations of
Pim Fortuyn (1948 – 2002) and
Theo van Gogh (1957–2004), and the emergence of
rightwing Populism in
the National Populist form of
Leefbaar Rotterdam in the city of Rotterdam, Pim Fortuyns party
LPF (
Pim Fortuyn List) which was part of a coalition government
the First Balkenende cabinet (2002–2003), and the emergence of people like the Dutch-American activist, feminist, author, scholar and (former) politician
Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
Rita Verdonk with her Conservative liberal, Dutch Nationalist, eurosceptic "
Proud of the Netherlands" (
Trots op Nederland) party, and ofcourse the larger and more succesful
National Populist and
rightwing populist Freedom Party (
PVV) of
Geert Wilders and
Forum for Democracy (
Forum voor Democracy) of
Thierry Baudet changed the Netherlands dramatically together with
the subprime mortgage crisis in September 2008 which is also called
the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
While the collapse of large financial institutions was prevented by the bailout of banks by national governments, stock markets still dropped worldwide. In many areas, the housing market also suffered, resulting in evictions, foreclosures, and prolonged unemployment. The umemployment, lack of future perspectives of many people and aversion towards the political elites, Brussels (the EU), Banks, Bankers and migrants lead to the growth of
the Nationalist Populist movement in Western-Europe. The crisis played a significant role in the failure of key businesses, declines in consumer wealth estimated in trillions of US dollars, and a downturn in economic activity leading to
the Great Recession of 2008–2012 and contributing to
the European sovereign-debt crisis.
In
the Netherlands, which profited from fiscal conservative policies of the late seventies, eighties and nineties and social cultural progressive policies of center left-center right coalition governments which would have and are impossible in the USA the economy had been gone great, due to our Gulden-Deutsch Mark connection with West-Germany and Germany. The Netherlands got a negative GDP growth. The country avoided a recession but still experienced slower economic activity. Cut backs by the government were devastating for cultural institutions, while in contrast with the USA more cultural initiatives are supported and funded by state subsidies than in the USA where everything is privately funded by charity, philanthropy and the cultural and art market sections of the free market. The were cut backs on social spending, health care, housing (projects) and other subjects.
The Netherlands like Germany and Scandinavia in contrast with Great Britain and the USA always walked a middle road between etatism and laissez fair, plan economy and a free market economy, with our Rhineland model social capitalist economy. Our economies are more stakeholder based with the Anglo-American (British-American) economies are more shareholder based. But in the 21th century things started to change and shift. The Netherlands being aware of it's international and cosmopolitan liberal laissez faire nature as a country dependent on trade (import & export), it's financial sector, service sector and manufacturing and food processing industries knew that it is dependent on the world market. We are a small nation with huge financial sector, Anglo-Dutch multi-nationals, water management skills, a modern agriculture and food processing industry, an important ICT sector (NXP, ASMLwhich is the largest supplier in the world of photolithography systems for the semiconductor industry,
Inequality and redistributionWith a Gini coefficient of 25.1 (2013) the income inequality is relatively low in the Netherlands. However, the inequality when measured in distributions of household wealth is high, where the top 1% owns 24% of all net wealth, and the top 10% own 60%. Moreover, rather large wealth disparities persist in the Netherlands in relation to age, where those under 35 years-of-age own 10% as much as older workers. This is a consequence from the low taxation of home ownership and a generous mortgage interest deductibility, which benefit the wealthier households. Due to the generous pensions the pension-related savings are the most important part of wealth in the Netherlands, yet are not subject to capital income taxation, which increases the inequality.
Iraqi refugees in the NetherlandsLargest companiesThe Netherlands is home to several large multinationals. Royal Dutch Shell is the largest company of the Netherlands by revenue and the largest in the world until 2009, but it has fallen since to 7th place.Other well-known multinationals are Heineken, Ahold, Philips, TomTom, Unilever, Randstad and ING, all of which have their headquarters in Amsterdam except Unilever which is located in Rotterdam. Thousands of companies of non-Dutch origin have their headquarters in the Netherlands, like EADS, LyondellBasell and IKEA, because of attractive Corporate tax levels. In these large multinationals a lot of migrants work next to native Duch workers.
Dutch migrants of Muslim migrant background and other non-Western migrant with a non-Muslim background, like African, Asian and Middle-eastern christian (Copitc, Assyrian, Maronite, Armenian, Chaldean Catholics), Syrian and Iraqi Yazidis have emancipated themselves, demanded and worked, studied and stuggled for a place in the Duch society, like they did in other European societies, like the Belgian, Luxemburg, French, Spanish, Italian, Austrian, Swiss, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, British and probably Irish ones. It is not easy for them, but it is not easy for any refugee, migrant or expat to manage to succeed, to have succes, to be integrated, to be able to settle, to urn an income you can live on and to protect, take care of and serve your family, community (if it exists in your environment) and the new city, town, region, state or Federal state you live and work in. Migrants have to struggle everywhere, and most often work hard to make a living.
Cheers,
Pieter